Saigon Execution
Photographer: Eddie Adams
Date: February 1, 1968
Location: Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnam
Eddie Adams of the Associated Press photographed South Vietnamese National Police Chief Brigadier General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executing Nguyễn Văn Lém — a Viet Cong prisoner identified as the captain of a death squad — with a single pistol shot to the head on a Saigon street on February 1, 1968, during the Tet Offensive. Adams was standing just feet away when Loan raised his revolver without warning. The photograph appeared on front pages worldwide and became one of the most powerful anti-war images of the Vietnam War, contributing to a dramatic shift in American public opinion against the war. Adams won the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography in 1969. In later years, Adams expressed profound regret about the photograph's impact on General Loan, who had been fighting the Viet Cong in a brutal guerrilla war. Adams wrote a public letter of apology to Loan's family after Loan died in 1998, saying: 'The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera.'
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